Use ServiceNow Now.Assist for Faster Ticket Resolution

What This Does

ServiceNow Now.Assist is the AI layer built into your ServiceNow instance — it reads open tickets, suggests responses based on your KB articles and similar resolved tickets, generates ticket summaries, and helps draft resolution notes — all inside the ticketing interface you're already in.

Before You Start

• Your organization uses ServiceNow (any version from 2023+)
• Your ServiceNow instance has Now.Assist enabled (check with your admin if unsure)
• You're logged in with your normal analyst credentials

Steps

1. Find the Now.Assist panel in a ticket

1. Open any active ticket in ServiceNow
2. Look for a Copilot button or Now.Assist icon in the right panel or toolbar — it looks like a sparkle icon or AI wand
3. Click it — the Now.Assist panel opens on the right side

What you should see: A side panel with options like "Summarize this ticket," "Suggest a response," "Find similar tickets," and "Generate resolution note."

Troubleshooting: If you don't see the Now.Assist icon, your org may need to enable it. Ask your ServiceNow admin whether Now.Assist is licensed and deployed. The feature was rolled out broadly in ServiceNow's 2024 releases.

2. Summarize a complex ticket

1. Open a ticket with a long comment history
2. In the Now.Assist panel, click Summarize
3. Now.Assist reads the entire ticket thread and generates a 3-5 sentence summary of: what the issue is, what's been tried, and what the current status is

What you should see: A summary you can use to get up to speed quickly, hand off to another analyst, or paste into an escalation.

3. Get a suggested response draft

1. Open a new or open ticket
2. In the Now.Assist panel, click Suggest a response
3. Now.Assist reads the ticket content and searches your KB for relevant articles
4. It drafts a response including troubleshooting steps, based on matching KB content

What you should see: A draft response pre-populated with relevant troubleshooting steps. Review it, edit for accuracy, and click Send.

4. Generate a resolution note when closing a ticket

1. After resolving an issue, before closing the ticket
2. Click Generate resolution note in the Now.Assist panel
3. Now.Assist reads the ticket history and drafts a resolution note: what the problem was, what was done, how it was fixed

What you should see: A draft resolution note. Edit if anything is wrong or missing, then save and close the ticket.

Troubleshooting: If the generated note misses key details, add them manually before saving. The AI generates from the ticket's documented activity — if you didn't log your troubleshooting steps in the ticket, the summary will be incomplete.

5. Find similar resolved tickets for troubleshooting help

1. On a ticket you're stuck on, click Find similar tickets in Now.Assist
2. ServiceNow searches your org's resolved ticket history for tickets with similar symptoms
3. Click into similar tickets to see how they were resolved

What you should see: A list of past tickets ranked by similarity. Often reveals the solution that worked previously — faster than Googling.

Real Example

Scenario: A user submits a ticket: "My Outlook keeps crashing when I try to open an attachment." You've seen this a few times but can't remember the fix.

What you do:

1. Open the ticket → click Now.Assist → Suggest a response
2. Now.Assist pulls your KB article on Outlook crashing issues and drafts: "Hi [User], I can help with Outlook attachment crashes. Please try these steps: 1) Run Outlook in Safe Mode (hold Ctrl while launching)... 3) Repair the Office installation via Settings → Apps..."
3. You review it — looks right — send the response
4. If that doesn't work, click Find similar tickets → find a resolved ticket that identified "large PST file corrupting the attachment handler" as the root cause for this error on Windows 11 23H2

Time saved: The suggest + similar ticket flow typically saves 10-20 minutes per ticket compared to manual KB searching.

Tips

• The quality of Now.Assist suggestions depends entirely on the quality of your KB articles. If your KB is outdated, Now.Assist will suggest outdated fixes. Use AI to write KB articles (Level 1 guide) so Now.Assist has better material to draw from.
• Train your team on the "Find similar tickets" feature specifically — it's one of the most underused but highest-value features.
• When generating resolution notes, always verify the note is accurate before closing — incorrect resolution notes make your ticket data unreliable.

Tool interfaces change — ServiceNow updates Now.Assist in every major release. If features have moved, check the right panel or look for AI-labeled options in the ticket actions menu.